The fatal moment as the cavalry charge in St Peter's Square whose name was merged with the recent battle of Waterloo. The rest is history. Photograph: Bridgeman Art Library

The Peterloo massacre on Monday 16 August 1819 - 193 years ago tomorrow - took place when a peaceful crowd, assembled to demand the reform of Parliament, was attacked by armed soldiers and yeomanry, leading to many deaths and injuries. The events of the day have been the subject of many books, novels, prints and poems, but the role of women has often been overlooked.

As the reform movement gathered momentum in the spring of 1819, women stepped onto the public stage, setting up Female Reform Societies in a number of towns. Blackburn women led the way. On 5 July the Female Reformers, described as "very neatly dressed for the occasion", and each wearing a green favour in her bonnet or cap, attended an outdoor public meeting, at which they presented a Cap of Liberty made of scarlet silk to the chair, John Knight. Alice Kitchen made a short speech:

Will you Sir, accept this token of our respect to these brave men who are nobly struggling for liberty and life: by placing it at the head of your banner, you will confer a lasting obligation on the Female Reformers of Blackburn. We shall esteem it as an additional favour, if the address which I deliver into your hands, be read to the Meeting: it embraces a faint description of our woes and may apologise for our interference in the politics of our country.

The Manchester Female Reform Society followed suit, issuing an address on 20 July, which was directed at other women, namely "the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the higher and middling classes of society":

Dear Sisters of the Earth, It is with a spirit of peaceful consideration and due respect that we are induced to address you, upon the causes that have compelled us to associate together in aid of our suffering children, our dying parents, and the miserable partners of our woes. Bereft, not only of that support, the calls of nature require for existence; but the balm of sweet repose hath long been a stranger to us. Our minds are filled with a horror and despair, fearful on each returning morn, the light of heaven should present to us the corpse of some of our famished offspring, or nearest kindred, which the more kind hand of death had released from the oppressor.

The radical newspaper Black Dwarf, produced by T.J.Wooler in London, warmly applauded the development:

I have news to tell thee – news that will make thy heart leap with satisfaction; as I know thee to be to be an admirer of female heroism and a zealous advocate for the rights of women, as well as of the rights of man…..Here the ladies are determined at last to speak for themselves; and they address their brother reformers in very manly language.

George Cruikshank's take on Blackburn women

Their political opponents reacted swiftly. The cartoonist George Cruickshank produced a caricature of the Female Reformers of Blackburn, for instance, and there were other sneers and slurs.

The massacre followed a rally addressed by the radical orator Henry Hunt whose peaceable nature was described by many observers. Here's one:

The Reformers…seemed determined to make this a splendid day...in preparing flags and small bands of music, and in arranging matters for the approaching meeting. It is evident, however, from the great number of females, and even children, who formed part of the procession, that nothing was anticipated that could involve them in the least degree of peril.

Women were soon among the victims of the notorious attack which followed. Mary Fildes, who was on the platform, was truncheoned by special constables when she refused to let go of the flag she was carrying. She tried to leap to the ground, but a protruding nail caught her dress, leaving her suspended in mid-air. One of the mounted Yeomanry slashed at her and then seized her flag but miraculously she escaped serious injury.

Jemima Bamford, who had accompanied her husband Samuel, a leading reformer, from Middleton, subsequently wrote a vivid account of her experiences on the field:

By this time Mr. Hunt was on the hustings, addressing the people….The people shouted, and then the soldiers shouted, waving their swords. Then they rode amongst the people, and there was a great outcry, and a moment after, a man passed without hat, and wiping the blood off his head with his hand, and it ran down his arm in a great stream.

The meeting was all in a tumult; there were dreadful cries; the soldiers kept riding amongst the people, and striking with their swords. I became faint, and turning from the door, I went unobserved down some steps into a cellared passage; and hoping to escape from the horrid noise, and to be concealed, I crept into a vault, and sat down, faint and terrified…

Another bash at reforming women. But they were capable of giving as good as they got.

In his own account Samuel Bamford describes an anonymous young woman who fought back against the soldiery:

A heroine, a young married woman of our party, with her face all bloody, her hair streaming about her, her bonnet hanging by the string, and her apron weighted with stones, kept her assailant at bay until she fell backwards and was near being taken; but she got away covered with severe bruises. It was near this place and about this time that one of the Yeomanry was dangerously wounded, and unhorsed, by a blow from the fragment of a brick; and it was supposed to have been flung by this woman.

At least 18 people were killed on the field or died later of their injuries, of whom four were women. These were Margaret Downes – sabred; Mary Heys - trampled by cavalry; Sarah Jones – truncheoned on the head by special constables; and Martha Partington, – crushed to death in a cellar. Of the 654 people listed as being injured, 168 were women.

The Manchester Female Reformers flag , was put on display that evening in a shop on Oldham Road in the manner of a spoil of war. An angry crowd of women and children quickly gathered and threw stones, breaking the windows. The military were sent for, who read the Riot Act and then opened fire. They also arrested a number of women, including one whom it was alleged had "talked loudly against the Prince Regent", and said things "it would not be proper to repeat". There was further rioting outside the shop the next day.

Campaigners have fought successfully in recent years for better memorials of the massacre. Photograph: Sarah Hartley/guardian.co.uk

The Home Secretary, backed by the government, gave the authorities in Manchester his full support and no magistrates, yeomanry or soldiers were ever held to account, despite a number of attempts to do so by survivors through the courts. In the weeks after the massacre, the authorities also targeted female relatives of reformers, as detailed by Joseph Johnson in a letter published in the Black Dwarf on 29 September:

Not content with multiplying indictments upon Mr Wroe, the intrepid proprietor of the Manchester Observer, and exasperated at his perseverance, and their incapacity to obtain possession of his person, the revengeful animals have directed all the engines of their prostituted authority to the persecution of his wife and children, who continue to sell that and other obnoxious publications. Twice have the mean violators of the law and deciders of justice held Mrs Wroe to bail, and twice have her children been taken out of his shop, and sureties been demanded for their appearance to answer the charge of having published scandalous libels, that told too much truth of these Manchester magistrates…In addition to Mrs Wroe, the wife of one of the journeymen, Mrs Hough and her daughter, were arrested and confined in the New Bailey all night…

At the end of November the Female Reformers of Manchester issued an address to Wiiliam Cobbett, praising his endeavours on behalf of the reform movement and thanking him for his support when the women came under attack.

It cannot be unknown to you, Sir, that our intentions have been vilified, and our characters traduced by the unprincipled scribes, of a venal and corrupt press. To you, in your excellent letter to the Female Reformers of Blackburn, we are indebted for a complete vindication of our motives, our conduct and our characters; you have refuted the calumnies of our enemies and proved our innocence and integrity. The days of chivalry are passed ; but in you the Female Reformers feel that they shall never want a sufficient advocate.

The female reformers were acting in support of their husband and brothers, the demand for rights for women lay some years off, but the example they set of political activity by women was a template for later movements. The walk keeps that lamp aflame.